THE COLD BIT AT MY SKIN LIKE WOLVES.

Go to your chambers, Persephone. You do not need to see this.

The pain in my chest knocked again at the ominous doorstep - looming, hungry, threatening to burn sanity alive.

“Persephone.”

No. No. No. No.

Thundered gathered under my skin, shattering and brittle, sparks of madness rolling in my fingers, tearing them apart into pieces of grief.

“Persephone.”

Persephone! I said, go!

Red eyes loomed into my vision, fingers clawing out the blood vessels like broken thorns. There had to be some escape - some way out of this despair, this desolation -

“Persephone - this isn’t real!”

My eyes flew open.

Hands clawed listlessly on the sheets of silk under me, twisting into knots and turning into whirlpools, pale and moist with pearly sweat. A jolt of horror shook through my core as I realised those weren’t sheets - but hands.

Hands. Bloodstained.

There were wrecked storms in his eyes, darker than frosted glass. His cold skin was a stark white in the moonlight, but nothing could have hidden the sheer emptiness, the loneliness, the desolation in his face.

“I - I - I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise…”

“Sorry for what?”

I had never heard him sound so bitter.

“For - for what I did - in my… sleep,” a whisper floated through my lips as I gestured to his bloody palms. The golden streams of ichor shone dangerously in the room’s dimness, his skin raw and gaping open.

I had done that. I tore them apart.

He noticed my gaze. A second later, the blood was gone. The skin healed.

“You were having a nightmare. I didn’t know what to do. So I let you hold my hand,” Hades muttered quietly, his stare deeper than the waters of the Cyane.

Color rushed into my cheeks, heating them.

“Are you alright?”

I bit my lip. It felt - it felt so surreal - yet so real - I didn’t even know if I was awake or dreaming.

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Biting your - I mean - hiding the pain. Don’t do that, Persephone. Talk to me.”

I was suddenly conscious of the chill in the air, the marbled goosebumps on my skin. The raw brush of silk against it. One of my shoulders was bare, my collarbone jutting out in the moonlight like burnished sand. The delicate lace filigree of the petticoat I went to sleep in had ridden up to the top of my thighs.

His gaze was raw, his eyes, hungry.

In the moonlight, the King of the Underworld looked like a dream. His lip curled into a ghost of a smile, twitching up ever so slightly as his hurricane gaze roamed over my nearly undressed body. Unaware, my toes curled inwardly, stretching with forbidden glee.

“Please, wife.”

Those mountains you are carrying, you were only supposed to cross.

“It’s about that spirit, isn’t it?”

My eyes refused to meet his.

“Is it always so… painful?” I asked at last, shaking off the cold, rumbling fears off me.

He sighed, silent, thinking. The black of his eyes had lightened to a cautious grey as he regarded me warily, deep in thought.

“Sometimes. Death is a painful business.”

His brows furrowed slightly, like a dent in perfectly carved marble. Then he breathed in deeply, exhaling silver smoke before gulping.

“The Fates decide when a person’s time is up. Thanatos brings their soul to me. I dole them their justice and make them pay for their sins - wherever they end up.”

There was a heaviness in the air.

“There has to be some other way,. The transition does not have to be so painful. Death is not kind to the soul, Hades. You speak of your justice, but what about the innocents? Why do they have to suffer? That woman - she died trying to feed a starving child. She died, and so will her child. Where is your justice, my Lord? Is this not unfair?”

“Not even a King can bend the laws of the Universe, Persephone.”

“What if they don’t have to die?”

“Would you have the world so overpopulated by humans that they start to kill themselves?” he questioned, a half smile on his lips.

Hmm.

“Not all of them have to die. Can you not spare the innocents?”

He shook his head sadly.

“Death is not a crime, Persephone. One cannot be innocent or guilty in the eyes of death. Death is unchanging. Death is fair. The fairest thing in the world. I am death, and I cannot discriminate. They all die, and we live on, and on, and on. They must leave their body behind, while the world moves on. If I pardon some and not the rest, will that not make me unfair?”

You may call me monster, but I am nothing but just.

Grief resided on his tongue like a living nightmare.

And it was in this moment that I realized - he did care. He did not enjoy this any more than I did. That pain, that sadness, it weighed me down with its weariness, tears rising in my throat.

All those tales they spun about the terrible lord of death - full of bloodlust and killing - they got that part all wrong. They never sung songs about the tired soul - echelons old, and weary of living with a flame of hope. He was burdened with the weight of thousands - millions of souls. A thankless job.

If the Titans in Tartarus decided to wake up, the King of the Underworld was the only person in the universe that could hold them back from wrecking the world.

And in exchange for his protection, the Olympians cast him out, left him in the cold.

“This is my duty. I am honour bound to do it. I keep the world safe from the horrors of the devils beneath us. My subjects are my children, and I am the father that protects them in the darkness. Like it or not, this is my family. I would not trade all the riches in the world for my kingdom.”

A breezy laugh slipped out of my lips.

“What is it?” his eyes widened, puzzled.

“Technically, you do own all the riches in the world, Polydegmon.”

“Stop calling me that,” he snorted with a roll of his eyes. I couldn’t help but laugh. He shook his head in disbelief as he sat down across me, leaning against a beautiful granite wall veined with milky marble. Picking up a tasseled cushion, he rested an elbow on it, regarding me curiously.

The horrors you have seen are not who we are.

“I wish I was the monster you think I am, Persephone.”

There it was again. The desperation. The loneliness. The parched need to find another soul in an oasis of misery. And underneath it all, there was the longing.

His eyes undressed me with their sheer intensity, while mine lingered on his fingers, wishing for them to do the same. His lips were full, like winter roses and charcoal smoke and dark, dark coffee, like all things angry and brutal.

An aching to be touched filled my body.

Not just any touch - a true longing to be touched in a way I had never been touched, touched into my chaotic depths, touched into all the places it hurt, touched in places that pleaded for release, pleaded to be set free.

He moved - still as glimmering water - a silent predator.

But I was not his prey.

He no longer scared me, I think -

His fingertips brushed the warm, sensitive skin of my thighs once, twice - my back nearly arched off the sheets of ivory silk -

- and he covered me with the comforter, his eyes shining with concern. Warm. Warmer than molten honey. But then he turned away, frigid.

“I hate myself,” he whispered. “I hate myself for doing this to you.”

A silver tear rolled down my cheek at the hatred lining his voice.

“I’ll take you home tomorrow.”

“The thirty days aren’t over yet,” my words wisped in the darkness.

“I - can’t -” he broke off abruptly, turning away. “I cannot keep you prisoner. I cannot see your misery.”

And what of your misery, Hades? Do you not think I see it? The lonely walks at night, the cold stares, the silent anger boiling in your skin?

“My misery is what I am. We are one, a slave and a master. It owns me, Persephone. This is who I am. What I am. Master of smoke and bones.”

“Show me your darkness,” tenderness floated out of my lips. “And let me be your light.”

His face fell, and nothing but raw emotion shone in his gaze, a foreign look - never had I seen him so lost.

“You will stay?”

“A Queen does not break her promise, does she?”

For the first time, a smile - a real smile pulled up his lips.

“We’ll visit the Asphodel Fields tomorrow. You will like them.”

“I-”

“Listen to me - ”

“No, Hades, you listen to me,” my voice rose an octave, surprising me.

He stared at me, enraptured at the sudden liquid fire of assertiveness that bubbled out of my throat. I felt my cheeks slowly heat.

“Show me. Show me the worst you can be. I am your Queen, Polydegmon. You cannot shield me from the terrors of this place forever. No more meadows. No more gardens. Take me to court. I want to watch you work.”

He looked at me, a statue frozen in clear marble.

“Please?”

Hades crooked a dark eyebrow.

“Fine. But on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“You fucking stop calling me Polydegmon.”

“Or what?” I teased.

His lip half curled in a silver smile, eyes glinting in the darkness like stars.

“I think you’ll find out soon… my Queen.”